


you're okay

by antleers



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, crossposting from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 10:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1645313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antleers/pseuds/antleers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He traces the edges of bed posts and mattresses, counts how many times Connie snorts in his sleep, tries to predict the weather the following morning with the way Bertholdt lies across his bed spread. He counts the blue specks in Eren’s green eyes (blue in green or green in blue?) until he realizes that the fact that they’re open means he’s awake, and staring at him from his bunk across the room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you're okay

**Author's Note:**

> cross posted from my tumblr! i should probably start moving my fics from there to this account...

Jean can’t sleep.

He turns over on his side when he grows tired of staring at the empty spot where Marco was supposed to be, the indent of his head on a pillow he’d never lie on again. Sometimes Jean still sees Marco in his dreams, freckles dusting his cheeks and a big smile on his lips, believing in Jean, always believing in Jean. It makes the guilt churning in his stomach worsen and those nights he wakes up in a cold sweat. No matter how much he tries, after that he can’t go back to sleep.

This is one of those nights.

Somewhere along the line of slaying titans and friends dying, Jean’s gotten taller. His blanket doesn’t reach his toes now so he has to curl into himself, knees tucked to his chest as if the slightest inch of exposed skin would mean a chomped off foot courtesy of the titan lurking underneath his bed.

He knows that’s impossible; Connie is asleep in the lower bunk, snoring away as usual, but the irrational terror is difficult to shake off. The only titan in the room is the one sleeping in the bunk across his, and while Eren can be an ass sometimes, he’s not a bad guy. Jean can’t imagine that messy head of hair, brown fluff peeking out from underneath a clump of blankets, capable of smashing down houses and cottages, tearing out the flesh of titans it would have taken five of them to put down. Eren is useful, he’ll have to admit, but he doesn’t like that word—as if all he is is some biological weapon to eradicate all the scum of the earth. He suspects Eren doesn’t mind it, would be _glad_ to do it even, but it bothers Jean. Eren is a person before he is a shifter and sometimes he feels like he needs to remind Eren of that himself, that he’s more to them _(to him)_ than a soldier bound by duty and the unbridled rage of humanity personified in a fifteen year old boy whose only dream was to see a world outside the walls. But they’re in the middle of a war that feels as if it’s never ending, no matter how many titans they kill, Eren or no Eren to help—they’re constantly on the very brink but never a breakthrough.

Jean wonders when the time will come for it to be okay to stop fighting. It’s unthinkable—an end to all the turmoil and the grief and the dead bodies they have to bring back to families and spouses and crying, so much crying. Jean cannot fathom for his life a world where they don’t cower in fear because that is the only world he’s ever known.

And if it happens, should it ever, what will he do when he has nothing to fight for anymore?

It won’t matter, he decides as he turns to bury his face into his pillow, because there isn’t a very high chance of him surviving to see it anyway.

Jean tries very hard not to think anymore after that. He tries to go back to sleep. It doesn’t work, so he takes to staring at the shadows the moonlight makes as it shines through the window opposite his bed. He traces the edges of bed posts and mattresses, counts how many times Connie snorts in his sleep, tries to predict the weather the following morning with the way Bertholdt lies across his bed spread. He counts the blue specks in Eren’s green eyes (blue in green or green in blue?) until he realizes that the fact that they’re open means he’s awake, and staring at him from his bunk across the room. 

“Why are you awake?” Eren whispers, but with the quiet of the boy’s barracks in the dead of night, Jean hears him easily.

“I could ask you the same,” Jean whispers back. He fidgets in his bed sheets, suddenly feeling stuffy.

“Go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep.”

Of course they’d squabble even at times like this.

“You go first.”

“No, you.”

Eren’s face scrunches up like it does when he’s about to get angry, but all he does is turn on his other side, facing away from Jean. Jean can see him breathing, his shoulders moving up and down slowly. He wonders if he’s gone to sleep.

“Eren?”

“Go to sleep, Jean.”

They’re quiet for a while, but Jean watches Eren breath and it’s not uniform, so he’s sure he’s not asleep. Jean wonders vaguely why he cares so much.

“I still—he’s still—” Jean struggles for words to say that aren’t _I can’t sleep because Marco’s still dead and I’m scared. I’m not like you. I’m scared. I don’t want to sleep knowing I might die tomorrow._ “…It’s hard.” 

Eren doesn’t turn to look at him, but Jean notices his shoulders go still. “…Yeah,” he breathes out quietly. “Yeah. I know.”

They stay still in the dark for a while longer, until Jean hears the squeaking of bedsprings, barely making out a form climbing down the ladder and up his, a familiar tuft of brown hair and green, green eyes (with specks of blue, or blue with specks of green, clear as day even in the dark) peeking up at him.

“What the hell are you doing?” he says, even as he moves back to make room for him. Eren hoists himself up wordlessly and squeezes into Jean’s bed. It isn’t very big in the first place so Eren is so, so very close to him, enough that his nose brushes the skin of Jean’s neck.

“Shut up,” Eren says before Jean can get a word in. “Just. Shut up.”

Jean shuts up.

It’s very cramped and slightly uncomfortable, but the warmth pressed against Jean’s side soothes him better than anything else. Jean notices Eren’s gotten taller too, almost as tall as him; his feet don’t fit under the blankets anymore. Their legs are tangled in each other and the bed sheets, Eren’s arm a heavy, warm weight across his chest. 

Both their feet are exposed, but Jean isn’t scared anymore. He falls asleep.


End file.
